Tool to update URLs to internal artefacts etc. in text boxes

[Kristina Hoeppner]

Data in text boxes is stored serialized. Thus, when wanting to make changes, it's not as straight forward as simply replacing an old URL with a new URL. Changes are necessary when an institution moves to a new URL for its Mahara site. Any images that have been placed into text boxes, description fields, journal entries, i.e. anything with TinMCE will have full URLs listed. The wwwroot part of them will need to be changed for the new URL. However, since the image was not embedded via the image block but as an image within text, Mahara doesn't re-write the URL automatically.

The same applies to links to other artefacts, pages or collections in a text box.

Thus, a tool would be nice in for the "text" plugin where an admin can provide the old wwwroot and the new one - the latter already pre-filled - and can then automatically convert all serialized data in one go rather than needing to adapt an upgrade script.

An easy site admin tool would be beneficial as this query had come up recently a few times and many Mahara instances will need to move from http to https and change links so that there aren't any mixed-content warnings.

For more info, please see https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=8031#post32261

See bug #1717380 for the query around relative vs. absolute paths.